Tag Archives: The California Trail

Post navigation

George R. Stewart opened Ordeal By Hunger, in 1936, with a look at northern Nevada from a 200 mile high orbit – and described the scene so perfectly that when Astronaut Ed Lu, of ISS Expedition Seven, photographed it, Stewart’s words and Lu’s photos matched precisely. In Storm, Stewart ended the book with a view from Venus, in which his imagined watcher from that world saw no sign of storms disturbing our world. In both these books, Stewart – perhaps not realizing it, or perhaps realizing it, was preparing for that great event that took place 47 years ago today: the First Step on another world.

Working for NASA, and working with Star Trek artists, I’ve been honored with some exceptional gifts that memorialize that great day. I’ll celebrate by contemplating a wonderful gift given by Mike Okuda and another gift from NASA education days.

Take a moment, if you will, to honor those heroes, and all those who supported them, and the artists who inspire us to follow that dream. Artists like Mike Okuda, Rick Sternbach, Doug Drexler, Chesley Bonestell, David Hardy, and so many others, who fire our imaginations to design and build ships to explore other worlds. And literary artists like George R. Stewart, who prepared us wonderfully for that First Step.

By the way, NASA has restored the entire 3+hours that Armstrong and Aldrin spent on the moon on Apollo Day I. You can see it or download it here:

October’s issue of The Donner Summit Heirloom has a series of articles about George R. Stewart, or topics that relate to Stewart’s subjects. There’s a good article about the search for the California Trail route over Donner Pass, which includes some information about the Lincoln Highway route – think Stewart’s U.S. 40 and The California Trail – a review of Stewart’s landmark work, Ordeal By Hunger, a description of the new George R. Stewart interpretive sign.

There’s also my article about Stewart, with an emphasis on his connections to the Donner Summit area. It gives a good overview of the man and his work. If you’d like a quick introduction to GRS, you’ll find the article – and the other articles – useful.

Thanks to several sponsors and the hard work of Bill Oudegeest of the Donner Summit Historical Society, the George R. Stewart interpretive sign, which will be part of the Twenty-Mile Museum, has gone to the manufacturer. The base will be installed soon; the sign, late next spring when the Pass opens. Here’s the final (or nearly final) sign:

Bill chose the location with care, and it’s perfect: A parking area which overlooks Donner Lake, Donner Peak, the historic “Rainbow Bridge” on U.S. 40, and the Summit of Donner Pass – which would have been the route of the first covered wagons over the Pass.

Here’s a photo from Bill, showing where the sign will be placed:

Stand by the sign, face northwest across old U.S. 40 to look directly at George R. Stewart Peak. Here’s a photo from a kind soul who posted it to Google Maps:

The parking area is close to the Pacific Crest Trail, too, The PCT crosses U.S. 40 not far beyond the left (west) side of this photo. Here’s a map from Bill which shows the PCT crossing – yellow arrow – in relation to the sign location at the parking lot – black arrow.

It’s a short walk – always face traffic! – to the Trail Crossing; from there, it’s a short hike and scramble to the summit of George R. Stewart Peak. The directions are on the new sign.

Let’s all hope to meet there some day in the summery future, and do the hike. Afterward, we can have a picnic – Ted (Theodosia) Stewart loved picnics – and read from Stewart’s books.

Thanks to Bill Oudegeest, and the sponsors who made this possible:

Alan Kaplan, Naturalist, Founder of the National Association for Interpretation, Stewart Scholar;

Paul F. Starrs, distinguished geographer, University of Nevada, Reno, Professor, author of books about California agriculture, the Black Rock Desert, and other topics;

Joyce Colbath-Stewart, wife of GRS’s son Jack Stewart, inveterate hiker, and caretaker of Stewart family history;

Steve and Carol Williams. Steve – who went to school with Lennon and McCartney – is a Stewart scholar, artist, teacher; Carol is his partner in all things;

Denise and Milton Barney, campers extraordinaire, who have walked the GRS journey with me for many years. Denise is a poet, Barney a scouter encouraging young folks to explore the outdoors like Stewart;

Beth Lapachet and Brian Byrne, also campers and colleagues for many years.

John and Angela Lucia, former Rangers, who have also walked the GRS journey for decades, and helped support it;

Bob Lyon, Founder of The Friends of George R. Stewart, Stewart Scholar, and Encourager of all things Stewart, who first introduced Steve Williams to the Friends of GRS.

In a recent post, I described the Twenty-Mile Museum – the interpretive signs that line the historic route of U.S. 40 over Donner Summit – placed by the Donner Summit Historical Society. Next spring, a sign for George R. Stewart will join the Twenty-Mile Museum.

Looking over the various pages on the Historical Society’s website, a few weeks ago, I found a link to their Newsletters. Since there was none with an article about GRS, I contacted the Editor, Bill Oudegeest,to volunteer to write one.

After receiving the first draft, Bill suggested the Society would be interested in placing a GRS interpretive sign along the old highway, if financial sponsorship and help with the sign’s research and writing were available. I sent in some photos and text, posted a message to the GRS group, and soon the design was underway, the cost fully sponsored. Thanks to Brian and Beth, Steve and Carol, Bob and Sandra, Paul F., Denise and Barney, John and Angela, Willie, Joyce, and Alan, the sign will be installed next spring. Caltrans has approved the sign’s location; Bill has done a fine layout. The sign will be installed very near the Historic U.S. 40 access point for the Pacific Crest Trail – which is also the closest access to George R. Stewart Peak. This means that hundreds of hikers on the PCT, day hikers in the Donner Summit area, drivers sauntering over Historic U.S. 40 (the subject of a legendary book by GRS), or anyone who visits the Society’s small museum in Soda Springs will learn about George R. Stewart and his remarkable books. Hopefully, many of those people will take the short side-trail and scramble to the top of George R. Stewart Peak (named in honor of GRS by the Board of Geographic Names). The round trip from Historic U.S. 40 is only about 3 miles.

Those interested in George R. Stewart and the Donner Summit area owe thanks to all those involved in this successful project. The Donner Summit Historical Society is always looking for members; one way to show your thanks is to join!

Below is the current draft of the GRS Interpretive Sign. It will be placed next spring, after the old road reopens. Some of us are already dreaming about a dedication celebration. Stay tuned.

There’s a legendary story about museum design that comes from Grand Canyon National Park. The designer apparently did a wonderful job putting together a state-of-the-art museum design. But when he showed it to the park’s superintendent, he got a rebuff. The superintendent said something like this: “The Grand Canyon is out there. Your museum keeps visitors inside and away from it. Open the museum up and let it lead them out into the Canyon.”

That’s also the philosophy of the Donner Summit Historical Society. The Society operates a small visitor center near the summit and publishes a fine newsletter. But the bulk of its energy seems to be site-focused. It sponsors a series of hikes into the area which help interested people learn about the place in the best way, perspiring as they are inspired. But it is the Society’s unique linear museum, placed along the historic route of U.S. 40 (and the Lincoln Highway) which educates the bulk of visitors about Donner Summit and the surrounding country.

The Twenty-Mile Museum is a fine collection of interpretive signs placed along old US 40. Visitors to the country made famous by George R. Stewart in Storm, Ordeal By Hunger, and other books can thus learn about its history on site. The panels interpret human connections with the area from ancient petroglyph-making eras through the Overland Migration period, the work done by Chinese Americans on the transcontinental railroad, and early highway eras. Here’s an example:

If you’re planning a trip over Donner Pass to Lake Tahoe or Reno, allow time to stop by some of those interpretive signs. They encourage exploration; so plan enough time for a short hike or two as well. You can prepare for the adventure by downloading the text version of the Twenty-Mile Museum Brochure here.

George R. Stewart educated the world about Donner Summit country, in the more than 20 languages in which his books were published. The Twenty Mile Museum adds the critical field experience to that GRS education. It’s a great concept and a highly recommended experience.

By examining six men throughout western history who seemed to share the same qualities and the same sense of accomplishment, Stewart found a definition of what comprised a (not “the”) good life: Joab of the Old Testament, William the Marshall, Heinrich Schleiman, John Bidwell of California, Architect Francisco Eduardo Tresguerras of Mexico, and Prince Henry the Navigator, (He apologized, with explanation, for not including any women). The men where selected from those he’d encountered in his scholarly work over the decades. In most cases, they were not widely known.(I suspect he profiled some because he wanted to let readers know about their lives – how else would the average reader in this country learn about the brilliant Francisco Eduardo Tresguerras?) The subjects ranged from the ancient – Joab of the Old Testament – to the fairly recent – John Bidwell of Chico, California.

In their lives, he discovered six qualities of character common to all. Each had clear goals, and stayed committed to those goals until they were accomplished. Heinrich Schleimann, for example, continued his search for the lost city of Troy during years of suffering the humiliation of failure and criticism from professional archaeologists and finally found the city. Each accepted responsibility for his acts. Each had great courage, sometimes in battle, sometimes, like Schliemann, in the pursuit of a goal. And, at the end of their lives, each man felt fulfilled in things personal and professional, and had an integration of his spirit with his physical, material life.

The book is an interesting set of biographies of remarkable men, many of whom most readers had only met before in passing. Discovering a pattern of character that helped him, and the reader, to understand why they are worth studying, added a layer of meaning to the book.

It may lack the power of Earth Abides. But the book is none-the-less an important part of his body of work. In a day when reading was still the primary method of informal education, the book introduced the lives of important but largely unknown historical figures to Stewart’s large reading audience. It also found in those lives a set of standards by which all lives can be judged – thus using them as a microcosm, in the best Stewart manner.

Perhaps most important, it teaches us about George R. Stewart – what sort of man was he? What values did he hold highest? How did his life measure against the six in the book? He didn’t answer that last question in the book. But he once told his son Jack, “That’s a book an old man writes.” In other words, in studying those lives he was giving us a key to his, as it drew close to the end.

But he wasn’t through with life yet. He was already hard at work on another game-changing book, which would win a major prize and help his readers understand the nuts-and-bolts of living properly in the Whole Earth ecosystem that he had first visualized and shared, in the 1930s.

George R. Stewart told his oral history interview, Suzanne Riess, that he practiced superfetation, like a rabbit. Rabbits begin a new litter while an earlier one is still in the womb. In Stewart’s case, he was researching one or more books while he was writing another book or two – and teaching, and living.

Between U.S. 40 and N.A. 1, for example, Stewart wrote four books. One was based on talks he presented in Athens while he was a Fulbright Scholar; the second was a a small work about the first wagon party to make it through to California; the third, his only book for children; the fourth, his last novel.

American Ways of Life was the book based on his talks in Athens. (“American,” in the case of this book, meant United States American.) Stewart presented the essence of the way Americans lived in the post-World War II era in several chapters: habits of eating, dressing, drinking, celebrating holidays, religion – even sex. For American readers, it was a good overview of what we share as a national culture. For foreign readers, especially those doing business with Americans, or traveling here, the book was an invaluable guide to American dos and don’ts. It’s not one of his best-known, or most readable books; but it is a fine window into its era.

By the early 50s, Stewart was researching the Westward Movement over the California Trail. In his usual passion for field research, he traveled much of the original trail accompanied by historians or geographers. (He first encountered the place he named “Sheep Rock” on one of his trail expeditions.) He also consulted books – especially the manuscripts of the pioneers which are held by the Bancroft Library. The one that particularly caught his eye was the oral history of Moses Schallenberger, a 18 year old boy who was a member of the first expedition to bring their wagons all the way to California – the Stevens Party. Schallenberger’s story was an especially gripping one – he was left alone near Donner Pass for 3 months, in a rough cabin, during a cold and seemingly endless winter. The two men who had volunteered to stay with him, and who had helped build a cabin at what is now known as Donner Lake, decided to head over the Pass. Moses was too weak to keep up with them – and in one of the great and moving moments of the Westward Migration, he encouraged them to leave him and head for the safety of the Sacramento Valley; and they, heading down the trail, turned and waved and said “Goodby Mose.” He survived, though, and was rescued. (The next year, that cabin would be used by the Breens, members of the ill-fated Donner Party.) Stewart turned this story into a small book printed by the University rather than a trade publisher. Then, thinking it over, he realized that with a teen-aged hero, it would make a perfect children’s book.

Stewart had written nothing for children. But he taught himself how to write for younger readers, who have more limited vocabularies than adult readers. The result was By Covered Wagon to California. The book was published in the popular Landmark Series – Number 42 – and enjoyed great success. It was republished 33 years later, in 1987, as The Pioneers Go West.

His Fulbright year in Greece gave Stewart the chance to research the history of Greek City-States in their original settings. Since his mother had taught him how to read Greek when he was still in high school, Stewart could easily read the histories and manuscripts of ancient Greece. It gave him the idea for what would be his last novel, The Years of the City.

One of Stewart’s literary devices was the use of non-human characters as the protagonists of his novels. By the mid-1950s he’d used a storm, a fire, a place – and in Earth Abides – the ecosystem as protagonist. In this novel, the protagonist was an ancient Greek City state, the fictional Phrax.

The novel opens with the founding of Phrax by a boatload of colonists which includes a child who is the only survivor of the sack of another city. During the early years of Phrax, the city grows into a strong community of ethical, hard-working people. Citizens successfully defeat an enemy known as The Horde, in what might be called the city’s high-water mark.

Then, the city’s inhabitants sink slowly into laziness, selfishness, and materialism. The old values are forgotten. They are now ripe for conquest – and it comes, at first, from within. A contractor creates terrorist acts and blames them on “terrorists.” The “old money” gives control of Phrax to the contractor and his thugs, and sinks slowly into softness and decadence. When The Horde attacks again, the people of Phrax are not strong enough to defeat them. The city is sacked and burned to the ground, to pass into (fictional) history. The only survivor is a small boy who manages to hide on one of the town’s ships – and thus, the story has come full circle.

The book was not a success. Although Stewart felt its length was to blame I think it more likely that the dark descriptions of the decadence of the city and the contractor’s use of “terrorists” to make the people fearful hit too close to home. As it does, and it should, today, as once again we hear of “terrorists,” and contractors benefit mightily from the wars that follow.